Most Important Products Of 98: Enterprise Application Integration Software
informationweek.com
Enterprise Application Integration Software
If previous years were devoted to implementing enterprise resource planning systems and other enterprise applications, 1998 was the Year Of Pulling It All Together.
ERP, sales-force automation, and customer-interaction applications have clear business value: They automate processes that have long been manual, and they help companies organize and collect operational data. But often the result of these automation attempts is a crazy acronym patchwork of ERP, SFA, CIS, and legacy applications that don't link to one another.
"Every company that implements packaged applications has the requirement to make them interoperate somehow," says Joshua Greenbaum, president of Enterprise Applications Consulting. Otherwise, the applications exist as isolated islands of functionality, and if companies want to move data from one environment to another, they must manually key in information.
In a fully integrated world, front-office applications would send sales information to ERP systems, which would in turn link to partners through supply-chain software. Integration is critical work, but work that typically requires significant investments in time and money to cobble together hard-coded interfaces that can be invalidated by an application upgrade. And ERP vendors aren't likely to make it much easier on users, because their first focus is their own platforms.
That's where enterprise application integration vendors step in. Roughly 20 companies have entered the market with an array of middleware technology to automate the process of tying applications together in a manner that will survive application version changes. One common approach is to place a connector module between applications, which ties them together on a business process level so no manual intervention is necessary. It's too early to tell which vendors will emerge on top. But analysts have their eyes on a handful: Extricity Software, which uses its software to link applications to partners' and suppliers' systems; Active Software and New Era of Networks, both of whose software, which focuses more on internal processes, is gaining ground. CrossWorlds Software Inc., the high-flying startup that virtually defined the market with its integration software, which is sold in a packaged, off-the-shelf approach, remains the company that all of the others are gunning for.
But despite the visibility it has generated through savvy self-promotion, analysts say CrossWorlds must demonstrate that it can produce the software necessary to win significant accounts and build a volume business. Analysts say the market's not just a fad promoted by vendors hoping to make money by promising integration. "This is not a temporary market," says Scott Lundstrom of AMR Research Inc. "These guys provide some substantial benefit."
--Jeff Sweat |
